Who am I?

Hi, I’m Kat.

At the age of 33 years old – when most people are becoming responsible adults, starting families and doing awesome things – I decided to take a break from my senior corporate leadership role to pursue my passions.

If this was a corporate CV, I’d be exalting my litany of professional expertise right now.

Instead, let me share with you what I’m not an expert at:

Creativity

Entrepreneurship

Philosophy

Philanthropy

Advocacy

I’m not perfect at any one domain. I am continuously learning at all of them. Yet I pursue each with equal joy (but varying degrees of excellence). It is at the intersection of these 5 domains that I am building the next phase of my career.

Yeah sure you are – but what does that even mean?

I launch platforms, forums and think tanks that connect people around a shared curiosity for exploring unconventional ideas.

Ideas can start a conversation. Ideas can inspire groups of like-minded and ambitious people to advocate for an improved social outcome. Like improved mental health or a more diverse and open-minded community. Or a more authentic and vulnerable way of leading people. Or valuing emotional & cultural intelligence in the same way we value cognitive intelligence.

The Fear of Failure Forum or “F-OFF” on 1st February 2017 is an example of this. Proceeds from the night are going to beyondblue which promotes good mental health. F-OFF encourages us to see failure as an incredible learning opportunity, tool for growth. It promotes constructive responses to setbacks and challenges. It promotes connection with, not isolation from, each other. If F-OFF is a success, we will launch a series.

Socially, I run high performance breakfast clubs that meet regularly to debate a topic of interest from the #futureofwork #leadership #AI #robotics #futureofbiotech #ethics&morality #entrepreneurship&innovation.

I work with brands that want to improve the way we work, the way we have breakthrough ideas and who want us to have more quality interactions with each other.

I work with ideapod – a social network for sharing philosophical & inspirational ideas. Their mission is to build the dominant communication platform for idea sharing so that we can incubate, disseminate, adopt and materialize the best new ideas. Ideapod believes that the best ideas come from a place of true inspiration, so they created Ideapod for all of us to share our moments of insight and breakthrough thinking – in 1000 characters or a 40 second video.

As the Australian Creative Director, I help Ideapod work with great brands to run campaigns. I also enable organisations to drive cultural change and generate breakthrough ideas using the Ideapod business platform.

I was born in Manila, Philippines and grew up in country Western Australia to an agricultural aviation family, none of whom have a tertiary or corporate background.

From an early age, I fancied myself having “everything under control”. I got my private pilot’s licence at 20 years old. I moved to Sydney to work in law & finance. I cultivated a prestigious career, married an awesome person, ran a few marathons and ticked a bunch of “life goals”.

Or, did I?

Whilst singularly focused on building my corporate career, I neglected interests that energized me. Interests like writing poetry, performing stand-up comedy and directing productions. Something was holding me back. It was fear of failure; a fear of not living up to expectations others had of me (including myself). Fear of not being very good at any of these things anymore.

A decade into my legal & corporate career, I decided to face my fears and pursue the passions that gave me the most energy, and inspired in me the most fear, doubt and judgment about myself – creativity, entrepreneurship, philosophy, philanthropy and advocacy.

Where am I going?

I am driven to shatter 3 myths – that:

your station at birth determines your potential

that people & businesses can become too old to change or reinvent themselves, and

that only large organisations or the establishment can wield influence.

I believe that individuals and businesses – not just governments or those born with many advantages – can change the world for the better. No matter their age, market cap or socioeconomic class of birth.